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Russian 'miracles' in children's art therapy

MOSCOW — The endless gray corridors of the Russian Children's Clinical Hospital, a looming Soviet behemoth on the edge of Leninsky Prospect, do not seem like the kind of place that would inspire bright drawings of flowers, animals and angels, or philosophical musings on nature and being rendered in pastels, watercolor and gouache.

But those are the kinds of works that went on display in Moscow last week at a large exhibition of paintings and drawings by children who have come to the hospital from around Russia to undergo everything from bone marrow and kidney transplants to facial reconstructive surgery.

"You don't want to paint something sad when you are in such a situation; you want joy and color," said Katya Gorbunova, 15, whose leukemia has been in remission for nearly three years. Her self-portrait in gouache was on display. At the exhibition's opening, she sang a piercing rendition of "The Little Drummer Boy."

The 1,200-bed hospital, the largest for children in Russia, is a pioneer in art therapy as a form of treatment for seriously ill children. The program is the result of cooperation between doctors and a group of devoted volunteers, many of whom were the spiritual children of a Russian Orthodox priest, the Reverend Aleksandr Men.

"Mothers wash, cook and clean for their child in the hospital. They just don't have time to deal with the child fully, to work with their child. Then people appear who push away the child's fear, who fill their life with activity and work with the child," said Lena Gorbunova, Katya's mother, speaking of how mothers in understaffed Russian hospitals are essentially "junior orderlies."

Of the impact of art therapy on sick children, she said, "Miracles happen."

The art works, which included elaborate bead work, went on display at the Russian Abroad Foundation, a gleaming new library and research and cultural center that is the creation of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and was built with the backing of Moscow's mayor, Yuri Luzhkov.

The foundation's exhibition room and multistoried atrium usually displays works by classic émigré artists, but until the end of January they are filled with the children's creations. (The project Web site is www.deti.msk.ru.)

"We have had exhibitions of great masters, of valuable museum pieces and manuscripts," said Viktor Moskvin, director of the Russian Abroad Foundation complex, "but this exhibition of children's art, for our home, stands in the same row with these expositions of great masters because the lifestyle that's expressed in these works, the optimism that exists in them, even exceeds that of the great masters."

The exhibition's opening was attended by Nikolai Vaganov, the hospital's chief doctor, who spoke of the role of art in treating - and even curing - children.

"When a child is engaged in creative work," he said, "when they draw and write poems and sing, their attention is drawn away from their illness. They're not absorbed by their illnesses like adults."

Many children were bused in from the hospital for the opening, and all of them beamed as their works were presented. Some of the children appeared healthy, although all of them are seriously ill. Others were visibly disfigured or incapacitated, including one, Guliya Fakhrutdinova, 14, who is confined to a wheelchair as she awaits a kidney transplant.

Guliya's drawings, bright swirls reminiscent of Kandinsky, belied her solemn demeanor. She also displayed a series of five works representing essential elements of life, including a butterfly traced from her downturned palms, and love.

"We have been in the hospital for six years," said her mother, Guzel Fakhrutdinova, who served Guliya pilaf in the ward's dining room, where Olga Gorneva, a psychologist, and Irina Kolosova, a student of philosophy of modern art, hold weekly art therapy sessions. They don't like to call them classes because they say their main goal is not to teach the children but to open them up.

Musical accompaniment, from classical music to religious songs and mood music, plays from a boom box. Guzel Fakhrutdinova said the hospitals in their native eastern Tatarstan had no such programs, although Guliya always drew on her own. "She drew birds and animals. Now thanks to the psychologists, she fantasizes," her mother said.

Kolosova said: "We want them to draw abstract art because it develops the right hemisphere of the brain." Her work at the hospital is helping to lay the groundwork for art therapy across Russia.

"There is an association of art therapy," she said. "We want to show that it is beneficial so that we not only help the children, but so that more people do this."